Went flying today even though I haven't finished my work Mainly I flew on the CL/SPW combo as it was very windy and I wanted to do some hell raising style flying and not worry about flying over top of myself. I had a blast until my wife called up and said I needed to come home to cook dinner. Yes I am the bitc. ... you get the picture.

This area seems to be a very noisy area. There is no way I can get close to 3km on the CL/SPW combo here. I seem to hit a wall in one direction about 2km. There is a big huge tower this direction. Funny enough with the helical I can head in this direction and make 5.9km pretty easy. I am thinking that in a clean environment (near my work), I should hit good range. Might try it tomorrow if I find the time.

I only went out for one long range flight until the phone went. It was so windy at one point I needed to fly a bit sideways to go forward. I have noticed that the 6 turn helical needs to be pointed pretty spot on as the beam is pretty narrow. I was playing around a little and found that if I drifted a little out of the sweet spot then my picture would fade pretty quick. At 4.5km away within the sweet spot my picture is still pretty clear. Getting in that sweet spot area on this antenna was sometime difficult on such a windy day. I would have to say an antenna tracker and a 6 turn would be great. In close it seems to pick up everything but far away I found I need to point it at the plane more directly. Does this sound right (asking those that know a hell of a lot more than me)?

I am thinking of building a 4-5 turn next to test the difference. I might start with just a 4 turn to see if that makes life a little easier.

@ whakahere : try the 5 turn !
I made a quick test (just for 2,5 km) of my 5 turn helix. was a nearly perfect picture all the time. no need to adjust precisely, just point it somewhere in the direction you want to fly. opening angle is maybe 50 -60 deg. no hard fadeouts, just slowly beginning to become a snowy picture. no need for a tracker for this one. further tests will be made next week.
cu and happy landings
Ralf

I replaced my damaged vrx SPW with a new one and performance has increased dramatically! You've got a good eye for spotting the damage from a grainy cell-phone pic! I flew out a bit past my 1km record today and had perfect video the whole way except for a bit of snow in some spots. No more crazy multi-pathing when I turned around to face myself either! Thanks again for your help.

@ whakahere : try the 5 turn !
I made a quick test (just for 2,5 km) of my 5 turn helix. was a nearly perfect picture all the time. no need to adjust precisely, just point it somewhere in the direction you want to fly. opening angle is maybe 50 -60 deg. no hard fadeouts, just slowly beginning to become a snowy picture. no need for a tracker for this one. further tests will be made next week.
cu and happy landings
Ralf

@rabe2000 I might just do that. On tuesday I am off to a club that has 3 spectrum analyzers so I am planning on check which frequencies are the best for my antennas. They also have SWR meters so again I will run them through a few tests, talk to the people there that have a load more knowledge than I do and see if I can push this antenna to improve my overall performance. At this point I feel I am not running my antennas on the best channels and I think my helical isn't setup very cleanly.

When running my 6 turn at 3km I have close to clear picture as well without having to point it very much. From around 3.5km I do need to watch it more. Of course at this range I don't want to start screwing up because of the fear of losing the plane so I guess there is more stress on my side of things as well. I would go flying today but all my luck I have mirage headaches so I am stuck indoors in a darker room ... low light on computer

@Vitamin_J how has your flying been going? have you gone a longer range on the cloverleaf and spw yet? Isn't it great to have a low powered system going so far

That reminds me of this one time I got snowblindness (the most painful thing I've ever felt, I was begging the doctors to make it stop), the next morning I was in a dark room with the monitor set to the lowest brightness and if I squinted my eyes just the right amount I could still make out the posts on RCG.

@whakahere: thats great to have access to such professional guys and their equipment! I think you can learn a lot there and will have a chance to test and tune your antennas. I am jealous .
get well soon with your headaches.

Ive flown on the 5.8ghz Bev version with the RC305 and although these ranges are impressive, the picture quality is quite poor.

Now i thought that was just something i`d have to live with, but side by side, my flying partner was using immersion 5.8ghz equipment. On the same cloverleaf antennas i used on mine and th epicture quality was leaps above what my Bev gear could come anyway near. No contest really.

Im in two minds wether its poor equipment, or the 500mw vtx, so im going out with the 200mw version very soon to compare

Ill fly with 500 mw first, then 200 mw then immersion in the same day, same conditions, same camera.

Yes please sir I would love to know the differences. I know the range on the 5.8ghz 200mw skyrf is pretty good but I would agree that after about 1 km there is static in the picture. With my helical antenna I can go out further of course and I hope once I tune the damn thing it might go further with a cleaner signal. My main goal is to push the system as far as I can, getting the best signal I can and then use it from there. I don't think I will ever use it as a long range frequency though ... that is mainly because I have a 2.4ghz 500mw kit just sitting here to be tested

@whakahere: thats great to have access to such professional guys and their equipment! I think you can learn a lot there and will have a chance to test and tune your antennas. I am jealous .
get well soon with your headaches.

My hope is to learn a lot. Of course they will be speaking in German and my German is close to rubbish .. well I think it is. I completely butcher the language. I hope they give me ideas how I go about tunning as I have never done that before. I hear one if also octheli pilot so I will talk to him as well cause I am building one myself ... on the cheap.

Ive flown on the 5.8ghz Bev version with the RC305 and although these ranges are impressive, the picture quality is quite poor.

Now i thought that was just something i`d have to live with, but side by side, my flying partner was using immersion 5.8ghz equipment. On the same cloverleaf antennas i used on mine and th epicture quality was leaps above what my Bev gear could come anyway near. No contest really.

Im in two minds wether its poor equipment, or the 500mw vtx, so im going out with the 200mw version very soon to compare

I guess the receiver too might be the culprit...
I think you are aware that you can't mix Airwave modules used by ImmersionRC with SkyRC modules used by the others ?